It is astonishing
that those who spent decades recounting the "lessons ofVietnam" have
themselves failed to heed those lessons. Forgotten now are theinjunction not
to intervene in civil wars and the admonitions regarding thestrength of
nationalism. Slobodan Milosevic is under far greater pressure toavoid ceding
control over Kosovo than Ho Chi Minh was to abandon his goal ofabsorbing South
Vietnam. "Signaling" the seriousness of our intent throughbombing was
not a sure-fire way of overcoming resistance in Vietnam -- noris it in Serbia.
Nor are our longer-run purposes clear. In Bosnia, we bombedthe Serbs because
they sought self-determination; we are now bombing otherSerbs because
they refuse to allow self-determination for the Kosovars. What are our
objectives? Presumably, they are to weaken Milosevic, toprotect the
Kosovars, to stabilize the region and to prevent the conflictfrom spilling
over Yugoslavia's borders. Can these objectives be achievedthrough the
means chosen? Not likely. Our instrument was to threaten to bombSerbia until
it accepted the agreement that we and our allies hammered outat Rambouillet
-- and then persuaded the Kosovars (at least temporarily) toaccept. Unless
Milosevic was prepared to yield control over Kosovo, a deeplyemotional symbol
of Serb nationhood, he had at most a few weeks to subdueKosovo. For
those who know the history of Serbia in this past century, hisresponse should
have caused no surprise. Nationalism, we learn again, is apowerful force.
The Serbs have rallied around Milosevic. Rather thanprotecting the
Kosovars, we have triggered the very outcome we sought toavoid. Far more
intimidation, repression and deaths will follow in the weeksahead than in
the period up to now.

And we have ensured
that the conflict will spill over the borders ofYugoslavia --
partly from the pressures of the refugees and partly from ourreported intent
to use Macedonia as a launching platform for ourhelicopters.
Up to now, objectives and our means have been sadly mismatched.Demonizing Milosevic
may be satisfying, but it is scarcely an effectivestrategy.

How do we define
the American interest? Since coming into office in 1993,the administration
has regularly -- and quite sensibly -- stated thatgetting along
with Russia (sometimes referred to as our "strategic partner")is a major determinant
of our policy. Yet we decide to bomb the Serbs and toignore the Russian
reaction, thereby forcing Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov-- en route
to Washington -- to turn his aircraft around as he reached theAtlantic. This
seems to suggest that the elusive goal of protecting theKosovars is
more in the national interest than maintaining amicablerelations with
Russia. That would seem a questionable conclusion -- andscarcely what
we have heard for these past six years.

The first goal
should be be to stop the violence, the first victims of whichare those we
seek to protect, the Kosovars. To accomplish this, the Serbsmust be convinced
that their own national aspirations will be taken intoaccount. To
be sure, we can continue on our present course of attempting tobomb the Serbs
into submission. It might ultimately be successful -- butprobably too
late. We can do what we have said we won't do: move in groundforces and impose
our will on a somewhat desolate landscape. But thatprobably would
imply a lengthy stay for U.S. ground forces. Since international
politics, even more than domestic politics, remains theart of the possible,
we could move toward accepting the emotional realitiesof the Balkans
-- and acquiesce in partition and, to the extent necessary,population separation.
Self-determination is the only aspect of Wilsonianismthat we have
sought to avoid -- with our insistence on imposing anAmerican-style
multiethnic society on Bosnia and now Yugoslavia. To be sure,we have not
always been consistent in our rejection of partition orself-determination.
We embraced it when we encouraged the Croats to expel ahalf-million
Serbs, but we never admitted what we were up to. Neither the
history nor the emotions of the Balkans lend themselves to anAmerican ideal
of a multiethnic society or to American preachments aboutmultinationalism.
Indeed, the ideal of multiethnic harmony will be even lessplausible and
more remote after we complete the current phase of bombing.While it does
imply that we shall have to jettison illusory goals of thesepast eight years,
to do so holds out the possibility that we shall be ableto extricate
ourselves and leave conditions that are reasonably stable. The Serbs in
Bosnia can join with Serbia. The Croats could join withCroatia. The
rump Bosnian state around Sarajevo should enjoy Western supportand protection.
Milosevic would have something to show the Serb populationas a limited
step toward Greater Serbia -- and it would compensate in partfor the loss
of part of Kosovo, which might go to Albania. In reaching thisoutcome, Russia
would have a critical role to play, a place in the sun, andour relations
with Primakov would be substantially restored. Unless it coincides
with the national interest, moral indignation is rearelya sound guide
to policy. We should be guided less by indignation and more byforesight.

The writer is
a former secretary of defense and director of centralintelligence.

Copyright 1999
The Washington Post Company

Bombs Away By Michael Kelly

Wednesday, March
31, 1999; Page A29 The most revealing
glimpse of the Clinton administration's thinking, such asit is, about
Kosovo occurred earlier this month in a private meeting betweenthe Italian
prime minister and the president. As reported by The Post,Massimo D'Alema
asked Bill Clinton a simple question about the contemplatedNATO bombing
of Serbia: What would the United States do if SlobodanMilosevic did
not back down under bombing, and instead increased hisassaults on
the Kosovar Albanians?

The president
was stumped by the question. He did not answer, but turnedinquiringly
to his national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger. Bergerhesitated, and
then replied: "We will continue the bombing." The Post does
not report whether the Italian prime minister at this pointran shrieking
from the room, but it would have been understandable if hehad. It must
have been disconcerting to discover that the leader of theworld's sole
superpower was about to launch a war without a plan thatextended beyond
next Sunday's talk shows, or without a thought to one ofbombing's most
likely consequences.

The NATO air
campaign against Serbia began on March 24. By March 29, theresultant Serb
ground campaign against the Kosovar Albanians had forced atleast 130,000
of them to take refuge in Albania, Montenegro and Macedonia.Serbian troops
were continuing their systematic campaign against the ethnicAlbanian population,
reportedly bombarding and torching entire villages,executing civilian
leaders, detaining men of fighting age and sending womenand children
into exile.

This is not the
result that Bill Clinton and his merry band of deep thinkersexpected. In
his March 24 speech to the nation explaining his decision tobomb, the president
said: "We act to protect thousands of innocent people inKosovo from
a mounting military offensive." Whoops-a-daisy. Administration
officials now are doing what comes naturally to them in thesemoments of embarrassment.
They are dissembling. Asked on Monday about newsreports of a
wave of executions of Albanian Kosovars, White House presssecretary Joe
Lockhart said: "We knew he was going to do this." We knew hewas going to
do this? We knew that, if we bombed Serbia, Milosevic wouldrespond with
a massive killing and cleansing campaign against the verypopulation we
were going to war to protect?

If so, then the
president and his advisers are guilty of criminalirresponsibility.
For the United States made no serious efforts to preparefor what Lockhart
says we knew was coming, a wave of killing and "cleansing"U.S. officials
now compare to genocide. The president ordered up the bombingwithout any
strategy to protect the Albanian Kosovars from resultant attack,without sufficient
ground strength in the region to even think aboutcountering the
Serb ground offensive, without even an adequate refugee-aidplan in place.

But of course
Lockhart is, in the proud tradition of Clinton mouthpieces,merely uttering
what sounds good in the moment. Others are too. Secretary ofState Madeleine
Albright, who has spent too much time in the company of herboss, went on
the Sunday talks to suggest that the Serbian army offensiveagainst the
Kosovar Albanians had been underway before the NATO bombingcampaign and
would have intensified as it did whether or not NATO hadbombed. "I think
that it is just simply an upside-down argument to thinkthat NATO or
we have made this get worse," Albright said. "To say that thishas now backfired
is just dead wrong."

To hear a secretary
of state mouth such patent nonsense is embarrassing, andfrightening.
Do these people have any idea what they are doing beyondbombing their
way through another day? Did they really start a war without astrategy for
coping with the most obvious consequences?

No, and yes.
The American strategy in Kosovo, such as it is, is rooted in aseries of remarkably
careless assumptions: (1) to insist upon a peace accordthat required
Milosevic to accept foreign troops on Serb soil and to placeKosovo, the
historical and cultural heart of Serbia, on a path toindependence;
(2) to think that Milosevic would swiftly back down in theface of, or
under the punishment of, bombing; (3) to believe that, ifnecessary, we
could pull an Iraq -- declare the bad man's military to be"degraded" and
go home; (4) to promise at the outset that no American groundassault was
forthcoming, thus giving Milosevic reason to think that he couldwait out the
bombing -- and that he might as well take the opportunity toget a spot of
ethnic spring cleansing done.

Michael Kelly
is the editor of National Journal. Copyright 1999
The Washington Post Company